You Parent Your Child This Instant!
by The Nerdinator
Summary: Join a bunch of troll parents as they try to raise their grubs to adulthood while trying to avoid a deadly game that if lost could destroy the only home they have left. Note: the adult trolls are a blend of their pre- and post-scratch selves. More info in the chapters themselves.
1. The Beginning

Another day, another blockhead made a mistake and now Mituna had to fix it. It wasn't that he minded programming; far from it. What he did NOT like, however, was having to edit the _same exact string of code_ twenty times each day. _That_, he grimaced, was the very definition of tedium.

"[S word]heads," Mituna muttered to himself, pausing absently to scratch at the base of his right forehorn. Admittedly, ~ATH was one of the world's hardest programming languages, but Skaianet had the world's smartest programmers, and a thirty-day training camp in the color-sensitive code before one went to work was mandatory per the orders of Jake Harley, the company's founder and CEO. People should at least _try_ to pay attention.

Which, for humans, was easier said than done in most cases. Mituna was a goldblooded troll, naturally inclined to possess the thinkpan buzzing of an engineer and retaining his species' almost single-minded desire to get things done quickly and correctly. Although they still had the potential to overlook things, trolls were still often more useful than humans in that regard.

Harley didn't discriminate, though. A person of species, whether they be human, troll, or Carapacian, was welcome at Skaianet so long as they were good at their assigned task. Mituna had to admit, there needed to be more people like Harley in the universe.

Then again, if there hadn't been discrimination against others, then Mituna's ancestor, whom the goldblood was named after, might not have gotten some of the troll population off of their old planet, Alternia. Had that not happened, their legacy would've gone silent when the monstrous green thing that breathed dark matter and made its piles inside black holes showed up and ate all native Alternian life (sans the trolls and the DNA codes they'd stored online) to extinction.

So there was that.

* * *

After some time, Mituna heard the sharp clicking noise of their alarm. He checked his computer's clock. 5:12:30 PM. Right on time. He packed up his laptop (it would've been a husktop on Alternia but the creatures those were made from weren't adapted to consuming Earth life) and slipped on his iconic helmet. Even though Earth's sun was much smaller than Alternia's, a G2V to their F7V, most trolls still sunburnt very easily.

As he made his way out, he saw a familiar face. "Hey Kurloz," he said, affectionately bumping his shoulder against the other's. The troll in question, a wild-haired purpleblood in full gray skeletal clown makeup, perked up immediately and signed excitedly.

"Wow, they really liked your idea for Cetus' new interface, huh?" Kurloz nodded yes. "How's Meulin?"

Kurloz signed something that made Mituna chuckle. "Heh. Well it's not like there are any _really_ heterosexual trolls, not many at least, so she may get her wish yet. Anyway dude, I gotta go back to my hive." Kurloz nodded knowingly and pressed his forehead against the goldblood's. "See ya."

As Kurloz left, Mituna heard an audible chuckle. "My, what would Latula say if she saw that?"

"She'd approve of it and shut up, Wilford."

The bulky white Carapacian laughed a heavy laugh as he joined his coworker on his way out. "Ah, you trolls and your fourway romances never cease to amuse me."

"Better to have them all separated out then have that cluster[f word] you and the humans call chestnut romance." The name had come from the combination of the red, faded pink, dark gray, and black of the troll quadrants being a reddish-brown color reminiscent of the seeds of one of Earth's native trees.

"I suppose your way has its merits. Speaking of, did you know there's a new security guard coming next week?"

"No, but I take it the Midnight Crew told you?"

"Yep. Stubborn guy named Spades Slick. Dersite. Fresh out of college and tired of dealing with everyone. Perfect for chasing down dumbheads."

"Spades? Oh no, we've got a full suit. What mischief are they going to get up to now?"

"Don't know, but we shall see! See you next week, Captor!"

"You too, Kingsley." Wilford got onto his bus while Mituna fetched his bike, and they parted ways at last.

* * *

Humans believed that life mates should live together in the same house, as did Carapacians. Trolls, however, still had trouble shaking off their ancestral territoriality, so generally speaking there was only one troll per hive. They _did_ believe in _some_ contact, though, so matespirit hives were always adjacent and joined by a tunnel connecting their basements.

Mituna had lived in an apartment complex before learning of a suitable hive that had just been vacated. Its total floorspace was about 1800 square feet, more than enough for his purposes. It was shaped like his old apartment too, thin and tall, which he liked.

"Ugh," he grunted as he removed his bags and slumped onto a faded yellow loungeplank facefirst. "No one make me use my [f word]ing hands for the next ten hours." No one was there, but he might as well say it. He was about to go to sleep when his phone rang. "Gog [d word]it," he grumbled.

He pulled it out and turned on the speaker, not even bothering to get up. He designed the stupid thing, he knew where each button on the touchscreen was by pump biscuit. "Who is it?"

"TUNA! You gotta come quick!" That would be his matespirit, Latula Pyrope, a tealblooded troll employed as a workplace safety lawyer.

"Latula, this had _better_ be important."

"It is! The kids are coming!"

That did it. One blast of his psionics and Mituna was flying off the couch and landing on his feet. "On my way!"

* * *

Mituna scrambled up the stairs and burst into Latula's living room. "Have I missed anything?!"

"Tuna, calm down, hatching takes time," Latula said gently. "They just started rattling is all. But hey, you wouldn't want to miss your child's birth, right?"

"Not for anything," Mituna affirmed, kissing her temple. He stared at the two roughly apple-sized eggs nestled in a box on the table. One was dark yellow, the other medium teal. Their children.

Once, trolls had been oviparous, like spleenfowl and megaticks. When the Empire was founded they were instead forced to combine their gametes inside of a distant evolutionary cousin, the Mother Grubs, since the old way wasn't nearly fast enough to pump out barrelfuls of cannon fodder. But Earth's lower oxygen levels weren't nearly enough to support a train-sized arthropod, so the old way had returned in full force.

Not that Mituna minded terribly much. The old way felt much more...preferable than jerking it into a bucket and calling it a day.

His thoughts were interrupted by a light, almost imperceptible _crack_. He shook his head to end his daze and peered into the box. The teal egg was shaking more violently than it had been earlier. Latula held her hands up to her face in shock.

More cracking. A pearl of cyan albumen trickled out of the growing crack at the top of the egg. Two tiny golden spires poked out, followed by a thin mop of black hair. Within five minutes, a six-legged teal eruciform larva with a gray-skinned humanoid head was peeping up a storm, her eyes completely teal.

"Awwwwww, c'mere little lady!" Latula cooed, scooping up her daughter and immediately proceeding to lick her clean. Humans found that practice weird, but trolls were not known to care about human standards. The frightened peeping turned into pleased murmurs.

More cracking directed Mituna's attention to the other egg. With much less fuss, a honey yellow grub with two pairs of thin horns emerged, dripping lemon yellow fluid. Mituna performed the same treatment on his son, who double-chirped meekly during the ordeal until it was done.

"Welcome to the world, son," Mituna said softly.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the siblings huddled next to each other, sleeping peacefully. Trolls, like Carapacians and unlike humans, could and needed to eat solid food as soon as they were born. A pair of clementines sacrificed their lives for the grubs' first meal.

Latula tucked a white stuffed dragon next to her daughter's form, while Mituna did the same with one shaped like a two-headed cyclops. Kankri had suggested the lusus plushes, citing that a) Earth-born trolls needed to learn their heritage even if most of said creatures were long relegated to computer simulations and old textbooks, and b) it had worked on his own grubs, Kanaya and Karkat.

"So what are we gonna name them?" Mituna asked quietly. "I was thinking Sollux for the boy, since that means 'sunlight'. Plus the whole Pollux-n-Castor name reversal thing."

"You should totally do that! It's pretty radical," Latula chuckled. "I'm havin' trouble comin' up with one for our daughter."

"Well hey, your signs are Libra for the humans, right? The one that's the scales in their stupid-[a word] horoscopes?"

"So...something to do with balance, then?" She took out her phone and found a translator sight. "Okay, I'm gonna translate 'balance' into a buncha languages and see if it coughs up anything cool...nope, nope, what's Xhosa? ...Oooh! Persian's got a doozy!" She showed her matespirit her phone, tapping on the word "Terezi".

"So Terezi it is," Mituna decided. "And Terezi it shall be."


	2. First Year

"Why are we doing this?" Mituna grumbled, carrying two bubblegum pink boxes as the late June sun beat down on his head.

"Because Cronus and Meenah wanted the old gang back together to celebrate their grubs' first wiggling day," Latula replied, pushing their children in a stroller. The grubs were much bigger now, having grown into their third instar. "And who am I to pass up a chance to catch up with my old Scourge Sister?"

"Girls," Mituna muttered to himself as they continued their walk. Sollux squeaked dryly in agreement. Only a year of this planet's shorter sweeps old and he'd already inherited his father's wit.

Eventually, they arrived at two combined hives with a large, lush backyard and two swimming pools, one built into the ground and the other a blue plastic tub filled three inches of the way with water. Turning off the hose that had filled said pool was a short troll with small, nubby horns and messy black hair. When he lifted his head to scope out the visitors, his eyes were revealed to be a bright LED red.

"Cronus put you up to this?" Mituna asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"No, it was my own idea. I figured that since two of the grubs are seadwellers, it would be nice to let them swim as well as us adults in the big communal wash basin."

"So you just casually lugged a kiddie pool from central New Thrashthrust all the way to Outglut?"

"..."

"Mituna, please be grateful for the gesture," Porrim said as she returned from their car with their grubs in her hands. Kankri's matespirit was a tall, imposing jadeblood with pale skin and asymmetrical horns, the tip of her left one flicked downwards. "After all, all wrigglers should learn to swim. They might need it later in life."

"Yeah, yeah, thanks Vantas," Mituna sighed, removing his helmet and wiping yellow-tinted sweat off his forehead. "At least this'll help us and the kids cool off. How the [f word] do humans even _stand_ this weather?"

"From what I've learned from teaching my classes, humans evolved in a tropical savannah," Kankri mused. "The heat's worse than it was in the old days because of their insistence on fossil fuels, but even so."

Porrim set her grubs down on a gray towel on the grass. Porrim and Kankri's daughter was a jadeblood named Kanaya, while their son Karkat was a mutant red limeblood just like his father. Latula extricated her own grubs from their stroller and set them next to the others. Immediately Terezi's eyes lit up and she pounced on Karkat, excitedly sniffing him all over. Karkat shrieked in shock and horror while Sollux laughed heartily. Kanaya strolled over to the rumble and let out a firm chirp of Extreme Disapproval. Hearing this, Terezi reluctantly got off of Karkat, who was shaking.

"_Someone_ has a crush," Latula snickered.

"Awwwww! I wish I'd had my camera with me." The disappointed voice came from Meulin, a greenblooded web novelist and Kurloz' matespirit. She had conical horns and a hearing aid graced her left ear. Kurloz signed a suggestion that Porrim looked uneasy at.

"No, Kurloz, I _don't_ think using your chucklevoodoos to permanently imprint the memory into her thinkpan will turn out as well as you want it to," Porrim said gently. Kurloz shrugged in response.

Meulin retrieved her own grubs, Nepeta and Gamzee, and had them join the others. Even with the fact that they were the oldest of the grubs, the purple-blooded, long-horned, and wild-haired Gamzee was surprisingly large for his age; his fourth instar wasn't even due for months. He lazily lumbered over to Karkat and plopped down next to him; Karkat scoffed and would've rolled his eyes had he pupils yet, but he didn't budge.

Nepeta, the petite greenblood, was much shyer than her brother, silently tiptoeing over and sitting down on an unoccupied piece of towel, quietly observing the others. "Nepeta's an introvert, huh?" Latula asked, noticing this.

"Actually, Meulin and I suspect she may have troll autism," Porrim explained. Porrim would know, she was a doctor and specialized in mental disorders. "However, we will only be able to truly tell after she pupates."

"Hello everyone!" A bookish-looking ceruleanblood with asymmetrical horns, the right one shaped like a number seven and the left like a spoon with the middle bitten out of it, and seven pupils in her left eye, jovially approached them, pushing a stroller holding two small grubs and covered in duct tape. Behind her was a nervous-looking blueblood with arrow-shaped horns.

"Hello Aranea!" Kankri said, bowing graciously. "Hello Horuss! Everything okay in your lot in life?"

"...I got fired," Horuss said meekly. "I was too...strong."

"Oh," Kankri said in not-very-much surprise, remembering Horuss *had* worked as an optician. "Well there's no doubt a factory who needs manual labor."

"There aren't any shortages, especially not in our area, but no one wants to hire a blue. They say I'm too 'important' and 'rare' to waste on something so 'plebian'." He sighed. "I just want what's best for my kids..."

"Stupid hemospectrum mucking up everything," Latula grumbled. "The Condesce is _dead_, why the [f word] should we still care about that?"

"Language, Latula," Aranea said sternly as she retrieved her grubs, Vriska and Equius, and set them amongst the others. "But I agree that the hemospectrum is completely moronic."

"Speaking of morons," Mituna snarked as someone touched down from the air. The person in question was a bronzeblooded troll with large cowlike horns and, unusually among trolls, wings as wide as he was tall. His grubs, Tavros and Aradia, were strapped in a baby carrier on his chest; in his left arm was his matespirit, Damara, a burgundyblood with ramlike horns. "Rufioh you dolt, you're gonna make your kids sick doing that."

"Oh, I wouldn't be _too_ sure, Mituna," Rufioh said proudly as he unstrapped the carrier, handed Tavros to Damara, and picked up Aradia, bringing her to face level. "They've been third-instar for a week now."

"Still too early."

Damara chuckled. "Tavros like flying though. Aradia...not as much." To prove her point, her daughter promptly puked all over Rufioh's face. Whatever Aradia had eaten earlier that day, it had been bright purple. Vriska and Terezi burst out laughing at the sight.

"Ew," Rufioh grimaced, setting the grub down. Horuss handed him a paper towel. "Thanks." He proceeded to wipe himself off.

"Hyperhidrosis has its advantages."

"Well, it looks like everyone is here except the guests of honor," Kankri said. "Does everyone have their gifts ready?" Everyone nodded. "Splendid! I shall notify them." He walked up to the back door and knocked.

"We're comin'!" A few seconds later and two unusual trolls emerged from inside the house. Both were rare semi-aquatic trolls that had once been Alternia's ruling caste, small jowl fins obscuring sharklike gills on their necks. The male of the pair was a muscular fuchsiablood with eyes a dark pink and jagged lightning-bolt-shaped horns. The female who had thin, slightly curved horns was a magentablood, the rarest blood type of them all, no psychic powers but a life expectancy of millennia. Assuming she didn't get sick or have an accident, she'd be around until _humans_ became spacefaring. Each troll carried a grub of their blood color that curiously wore a tiny party hat.

"Were the tiny hats _really_ necessary?" Aranea asked, breaking the awkward silence.

"They look cute, don't they though?" Meenah smirked.

"I don't think endangering your child's wellbeing is worth that."

"Eh, who cares about what _you_ think, nerd?"

Aranea sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "_Why_ did I ask Gog for a kismesis? _Why_?"

"Because everyone else was doing it?" Mituna offered.

"Ah, yes, that must be it."

"Hey, no hateflirting in front of the kids!" Latula interjected, narrowing her eyes at the little thing in Cronus' hands. "Especially Eridan. I don't trust 'im." Eridan, the male fuchsiablood, looked up at the mention of his name and quickly shrank back, startled by the presence of unfamiliar people.

"Don' worry 'tula, we aren't gonna do nothin' crazy," Cronus said, glaring at those he was austipizing. _"Right?"_

"Right," Meenah and Areanea sighed in unison.

"Now let's give our kids a good first wiggling day." He and Meenah set their grubs down with the others, let them sniff each other to get familiar with each other, then addressed his children. "Eridan, Feferi, happy birthday. A year ago today you broke out of your eggs and saw the world for the first time. Today, old friends of ours bring you gifts. Both material, and friendships." Feferi excitedly waggled her tail fin as she eyed the other grubs, mainly Aradia, who was still recovering from vomiting on her father and looked ready to do it again. "So let's see what we've got for ya. Kankri, Porrim, I think you guys came here first, so you get first crack."

"Of course," Kankri said. "Are we opening these for them? They don't exactly have hands."

"How about _we_ open them, since we're the parents?" Meenah asked.

"That works as well." He and Porrim walked over to their stroller and came back. He handed Meenah a flat, rectangular thing in bubblegum pink wrapping – the color right between pink and rose red, the most saturated versions of the parents' respective blood colors. As she tore off the paper, he went on. "Though grubs don't develop vocal cords until after pupation, they can and do understand speech from their first year onward. So I figured, why not give them a bit of a headstart?"

"A picture dictionary?" Meenah asked on seeing said gift. "This is _so_ you."

"My gift is also for after pupation," Porrim added, handing Cronus a slightly slimmer, floppier rectangle. "I don't know how big they will get, so this should cover any size they get."

"Baby clothes," Cronus muttered when he discovered the book in question was a catalogue. "The very industry that said our blood color was for girls and wussies only."

"Humans are dumb," Damara said matter-of-factly.

"_Most_ humans," Kankri corrected her. "I happen to have taught quite a few geniuses myself."

"And they proceed to waste their education on a history major, which is [f word]ing _useless_," Mituna quipped. "Latula and I got two of the same thing, but slightly different. Here."

The seadwellers opened the boxes. "Ah, so cute!" Meenah squeed, removing two differently-styled tacky Christmas socks, with "ERIDAN" and "FEFERI" crudely stitched into the cuffs in black thread. "Twelfth Perigee Sacks!"

"They had a sale at Sprite's," Latula said proudly. "Which was great because Terezi chews _everything_." In the background, Terezi was eating the corner of the grub towel, much to Kanaya's horror.

Kurloz pulled a box of colored pencils out of his hair and handed it to Cronus. "Uh...thanks?"

"_Another_ one for when our kids get older?" Meenah asked, disappointed. "C'mon guys, you're parents too. The least you could do is give us some loot we can give them _now_!"

"I have just the thing for that!" Meulin exclaimed, pulling something out of her pocket. It turned out to be a laser pointer. "Gam and Nep go _crazy_ over these. Try it on yours!"

Meenah turned it on, and Feferi quickly turned her head to look at the purple dot. "Ya see the dot? Go on, go get it!" Feferi quickly scrambled after it. Eridan noticed and ran after his sister.

"_Nice_," Meenah grinned. "Playtime's gonna be so much more _fun_!"

"Until someone smacks facefirst into the wall," Kankri reminded her. Meenah brought the grubs back with the laser pointer, then turned it off. Eridan quickly figured out where the purple dot had come from, while Feferi stood there dumbly, blinking in confusion.

"Horuss and I brought wet wipes," Aranea said as her matespirit retrieved a box of them. "We figured you might go through a lot."

"Good call, that Egbert fella I work with gave us a throw pillow as his little gift for today and it's been makin' Eridan sneeze pink all over the couch," Cronus nodded. "I'm startin' to think he might be allergic to feathers."

"We're not from this planet, how we're not allergic to _everything_ is beyond me," Kankri remarked.

"Is strange," Damara admitted. "Anyway, Rufioh and I have very good gift for your grubs." She produced two halves of a bone, each with a colored rope feeding out of it. "To keep teeth sharp." She set them down and Eridan quickly began chewing on the fuchsia one, quickly relaxing.

"Every time they grow new teeth, they can break 'em in with one of those," Rufioh said proudly, before handing the parents a triangular device. "I also got you this little beauty to locate their shed teeth, because stepping on those? _Not_ fun." Tavros babbled cheekily on hearing this, catching his father's attention. "You little scamp you, leaving those lying around so your daddy needs bandaids? Little finks get caught in the carpet, too, and they are _hard_ to vacuum out."

Kurloz smiled and signed something. "Yes, Kurloz, we know, you rarely ever take your shoes off," Meenah said. "But Dams grew up in Japan, you know, and they're really fussy about taking your shoes off soon as you get through the door." More signing. "He doesn't mean to be offensive, Dams, he's just comparing lifestyle choices."

"I take none," Damara shrugged. "What about you?" she asked the sea dwellers.

"We're givin' our kids a pool party," Meenah grinned. "Everyone strip to their vinyl jammies and get in the big pool after we've made sure the kids are having fun. Meulin, you remember to bring your case for your hearing aid?"

"I never leave home without it!"

"Then let's get swimmin'."

* * *

Once suitably undressed, the adults set to work getting the kids introduced to the kiddie pool. Feferi and Eridan got in readily, but the others had never seen that much water before; for most of their short lives they'd just been washed with a wet towel.

Gamzee was the first to try it out, crawling over the lip of the pool and promptly faceplanting into the water. He picked up his head and honked merrily. That was enough to convince the others to join him.

Cronus emerged from the house with something in his hands. "We can't forget Bilious Slick," he chuckled, tossing an orange-sized red rubber frog with a starry paint scheme into the pool. The kids quickly divided themselves up to play a game of KickFrog, Equius, Aradia, Nepeta, Eridan, Feferi, and Sollux on one team and Karkat, Terezi, Gamzee, Tavros, Vriska, and Kanaya on the other.

"Ah yes, the bath toys," Kankri smiled as Cronus joined the adults in the pool.

"And the lusus plushes. Good call there, buddy o' mine," Cronus laughed, slapping his moirail on the shoulder. "The grubs really do sleep quite well with them. Got Eridan a Cavalry Hippocamp and Feferi a...I forget."

"Rippleback," Meenah replied. "Like those giant marine death lizards that used to rule the seas eighty million years ago, but with the head of a flamingo and no back feet. Wasn't gonna give lil' Fef a plush of the abomination that nurtured the Condesce, even if I _am_ her descendant, now would I? How 'bout you, Kankri? It was your idea, after all."

"A Mother Grub for Kanaya, Crabdad for Karkat since I believe the latter had bright red blood just as us," Kankri said. "Kanaya's quite careful with hers, it's so precious to watch. How about you lot? Aside from the seadwellers I know of Latula and Mituna's acquisitions, a dragon and a bicyclops, but what about the rest?"

"Fairy bull for Tav, horndog for Aradia," Rufioh said.

"Butlerbeast for Equius and a thoracispider for Vriska," Horuss added.

Kurloz signed. "And a seagoat for Gamzee and a double-mouthed meowbeast for Nepeta," Kankri nodded. "What would've been acceptable lusii for us in the old days. Although I think we all agree that actually interacting with our children is much better than having them raised by a...non-sapient lifeform."

"Hear hear for decent parenting!" Latula agreed.

"Oh, I would've loved to see those wonderful creatures in real life!" Meulin exclaimed. "Lusus or not, the beasts of our old homeworld fascinate me!"

"Well, fairy bulls are among the few of our lifeforms who _can_ live on Earth, there's a good population of them in Michigan," Rufioh revealed. "Maybe you and Kurloz could go there." Kurloz beamed and signed. "And that's where Faygo comes from? Oh, _guys_, now you _have_ to go there."

Suddenly, something big slammed into the yard. The grubs shrieked and hid behind Bilious Slick. "HOLY [F WORD] WHAT THE [H WORD]!" Aranea shrieked.

The thing got up. It was monstrously tall, at least nine foot, a humanoid body covered in green scales, four-fingered clawed hands and two-toed feet with a dewclaw on the inner heel. Its mouth...ugh, its entire head was a terrible, skeletal monstrosity, spiral-shaped spots in its cheeks glowing bright red. Its eyes pulsed an unnatural yellow and purple. Two massive black feathery wings came from its back.

And it was _badly_ injured. The wings were mere shells of their former selves. Bite marks and scratches littered its body, oozing blood and pus. Its upper right canine was missing. The worst, though, was the stump where its right calf should've been, replaced with a crude metal prosthetic. Its breathing was rough and ragged.

From an orifice just above its butt crack a football-sized egg, colored neon green and red in a spiral pattern, fell out and onto the ground.

"What...what the heck?" Mituna asked.

Kankri gulped. "I know that cherub."

"Cherub? You mean those fat little babies that humans say promote red romance? Or supposedly do, at least?" Latula asked.

"Not that kind of cherub. The alien species called 'cherubs'. They can survive in space unassisted. The only romance they know is black. And they will either protect you or kill you. And that right there is no ordinary cherub. I've taught his literature in my classes as exemplars of nonlinear time narratives. That...that is Andrhuss the Incomprehensible. The very one who destroyed Alternia." The adult trolls gulped together.

Andrhuss laughed darkly before coughing up blood. "So my reputation _lives_," he smirked, his voice making their brains jiggle uncomfortably. "You are _much_ too young to have seen what I did to your homeworld. My teachers, the Felt, set up a little game for those who didn't go offplanet with Mr. Appleberry Blast. Win it, and I would grant your kind immortality, and they would join me in ruling the universe. Lose...and your world would be stripped bare of life. Your kind lost, so I went ahead and killed their world." He grimaced. "And until _she_ showed up, my pangalactic conquests were going just great. How do _you_ know of cherubs, oh long-winded one?"

"Because of Missuspa, the Matron of Skaia," Kankri said. "Although she couldn't keep Jack Noir from decimating their system, she was able to drive him away eventually."

Andrhuss growled. "I tried to fight her. I have beaten other cherub females before, and I figured I could conquer and impregnate her as well. But she fought back much harder than I'd anticipated. [B word] ate my foot, too." He coughed again. "She won, and because of the extent of my injuries, this will be the last child I will ever have. But know _this_, trolls..."

"Do _not_ let my progeny make the same mistakes I made. Whatever you do, avoid Sgrub, or whatever name it will take on next." And then he died.

"Uh...okay...which one of us knows how to raise a space demon?" Meenah asked.

"I studied cherub culture quite a bit to write my most famous novel," Meulin said softly. "I guess the egg's mine. It's been incubating for a year, since it only now just came out..."

That's when the egg hatched and a serpentine creature, but with a humanoid skull, slithered out and ate its eggshell, before going to investigate the pool. Once the grubs decided they weren't a threat, they let them join their game of KickFrog. But the baby cherub would alternate between teams.

"Even now their personalities exist," Meulin explained. "Once they pupate next year, they will separate and take on their gender identities. The female self will be nice and sweet, the male cruel and dumb."

"What do they eat?" Horuss asked.

"They can photosynthesize, but they're primarily carnivorous. Candy is also vital, since they have trouble digesting complex sugars. Luckily, I quite like meat, and sweets are a big part of subjuggulator culture. We'll be fine. Well," she sighed, "as long as the kids learn to ignore the male self. If their father was a terror, his son's bound to be even harder to teach peace to."

**But we are up to the challenge,** Kurloz chucklevoodooed.

And that's when the other adults knew the Leijon-Makaras _had_ to be serious.


	3. Second Year

Mituna carefully eyed the twin pupae in their respective hospital cubes. "How much longer?" he asked.

"Your son is developing normally," the Prospite nurse, identified as NELL BRIGHTON by her nametag, replied. "He has hit his developmental checkpoints and should be ready to hatch in two month's time. However, your daughter is...taking a little longer than normal. We are concerned that she may have an infection of some sort, as tealbloods are the color most prone to disease during pupation of all trolls."

Mituna sighed. "I was afraid of that. Latula caught a nasty cold when she was a pupa and got permanent sinus damage because of it. Can't smell anything with her right nostril, and the left one can barely manage. Can you stop it?"

"No, because antibiotics interfere with normal development into the imago. And _trust_ me, a one-eyed troll is _not_ something you wanna see." Brighton shuddered.

"Oh. I see." His eyes flickered to two other pupae nearby. One was dark green, flat and thin, with two spines at the top. The other was a black box hooked into the wall. "What's that?"

"Oh! That would be the Leijon-Makara's adopted cherubs, Caliborn and Calliope. We have split them into separate bodies."

"...you can _do_ that?!"

"Of course! Provided we have the genomes of both parents, we can synthesize stem cells with a genetic code identical to that of the original child, and then transfer one personality into the whole new body, in this case Caliborn. It's how we've managed to have cherubs on Earth without them turning into massive snakes the length of the solar system's radius."

"You sure?"

"Yes, the transformation appears to be linked to an ability to tap into 'the enigmatic forces presiding over all that is eternal', as they call it. Splitting the cherubs severs that connection. Not harmful, since cherubs don't seem to have naturally evolved that ability in the first place."

"Either you paid attention in history class, or you're a big fan of Meulin's books."

"I am!" Nell beamed. "Do you know her?"

"We went to college together at Evergreen."

"Wow! _Fascinating._" She sighed. "Mituna? Do you feel...a sense of forboding?"

"A little bit. Why?"

"Because we have _Andrhuss the Incomprehensible's SON AND DAUGHTER IN OUR CUSTODY_!" She hyperventilated a bit. "The Felt are gonna be after our shells for certain!"

"Hm...yeah, that's probably it. Don't worry lady, I'm gonna tell my son to avoid that crap as hard as I can." He paused. "Did you feel a draft right now?"

* * *

It was no draft.

At a secret base somewhere on the near side of the Moon, a creature burst into the main control room. His skin was neon green and soft, lightly furred. He was bipedal with four stubby fingers per hand and the same number on each shoe-clad foot. He wore a suit that matched his skin color and a yellow hat with a "1" surrounded by a white circle.

"You get them all in place, Itchy?" asked another member of his species, this one broader-shouldered and wearing a maroon triangular hat with a "7" on it.

"Of course I got them placed, Crowbar!" Itchy scoffed. "We's gonna be watching every step they make for the foreseeable future!" He panted. "Ugh, I need a drink."

"Hey, if you do, better not make it coffee. Too much caffeine will kill ya. Literally. It'll tear apart your insides."

"Okay, _fine_, 'dad'," Itchy grimaced, limping away.

Footsteps. "Did he succeed?" asked a new voice.

Crowbar sighed. "Yes, Doc, he did."

"Very good, friend. Very good indeed. Fire up the cameras and we shall get to watching."

"Yes, sir." Crowbar walked away.

The owner of the voice chuckled. He was a small android in a white suit over a green undershirt and bowtie. His head was a white sphere, devoid of any features. "Well then," he smirked. "The game is afoot. And once again...

"I shall prove that I am an _excellent_ host."


End file.
